Saturday, January 23, 2010

This afternoon I went out to Lighthouse Park in West Vancouver to get a Pano shot of the Lighthouse. If you remember a few posts back, I posted a pano photo of Cypress Creek. This one was done the same way using HDR. This one also contains 45 photos. While I was there, I came across some birds along the shore feeding on snails. I believe they're a specie of Sandpiper...so I got a few shots of them, as well as a Cormorant fishing. I finished off the trip to LHP with an HDR shot of an Arbutus tree with my fisheye lens....photos below

Thursday, January 21, 2010

I've been wanting some night shots of the Telus World of Science for a while now. Tonight I finally found some motivation to make the drive down there and get some shots. I kept it simple with a Vertical, Horizontal, and a Pano and here they are....

Saturday, January 16, 2010

With the convenience of the sun showing up on a weekend, I took full advantage of it and got out to take some photos. Before I get too into this blog, here is a shot of the sunrise in Ladner, BC.

1/350 @ f/4.5, 100mm, ISO 250

My goal of the morning was to get some decently lit waterfowl flight shots. It was dead calm today and the birds just weren't flying so I took some typical "behavioral" shots. Here are a few.

1/1000 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 800

1/500 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 640

1/1000 @ f/5.6, 260mm, ISO 640

1/750 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 640

1/1500 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 800

After about 2 hours of not having much luck with flight shots, I decided to pack it in. As I was putting my camera in my bag, I noticed 3 other photographers all pointing their cameras in a similar direction. So I took out my camera again and pointed it towards where they were to see what they were shooting. They were photographing a Pileated Woodpecker and since I don't have any photos of them, I figured I may as well grab a few while the opportunity was there. Here's the catch though, the woodpecker was located across the pond I was at so I needed the bird to hang around for at least 5 minutes to give me enough time to walk around to it. 5 minutes doesn't seem like a long time, but think about how long a bird typically sits in one place... 5-10 seconds maybe? The odds were against me but sure enough the woodpecker was in the same place. Here are a couple shots of it.

1/3000 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 500

1/4000 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 500

1/4000 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 500

Since I was already in Ladner, Tsawwassen wasn't too far out of the way so I headed there next. I've wanted some photos of a Heron fishing for a while now and Boundary Bay has a pretty healthy population of them. They like to feed on small fish in the shallows at high tide so that's where I headed. After a bit of a hike along the beach, I found the Heron I was looking for. Unfortunately it was in no rush to eat. I waited 30 minutes for this bird to finally start moving and it was another 15 minutes after that when it finally took a stab at getting a meal. It only made one attempt at eating while I was watching it and thankfully I got it on camera...

1/2000 @ f/5.6, 360mm, ISO 400

1/2000 @ f/5.6, 250mm, ISO 400

Luckily there were other birds to photograph to help pass the time while waiting for the Heron to fish. Here are a few shots of some Greater Yellowlegs.

1/4000 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 500

1/4000 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 500

1/3000 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 400

1/3000 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 400

I'll close off this blog entry with one last photo of a Red-tailed Hawk I spotted near the parking lot.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Once again today I headed to Ladner for some waterfowl photos. The weather was pretty much the same as yesterday...dull and overcast, but it beat staying inside watching daytime TV. Since the weather was the same, the behavior of the ducks was the same too. Hardly any flying so I just focused on the same type of shots as yesterday. Some Sandhill Cranes also made an appearance and were more photogenic than usual...waterfowl and crane photos to follow the paragraph below.

I would also like to take this time to explain my thoughts on overcast vs. sunny shooting conditions in regards to photographing wildlife. I'm sure those of you that read these regularly have noticed that my thoughts on shooting under overcast skies are normally pretty negative. While this may be true, this negativity is only in comparison to shooting on a sunny day. Once you've seen what photos look like in great light, why would you want to take photos with no direct/flat lighting? Well I'll tell you why. When it comes to wildlife photography, you have to understand that the birds and animals are going to do what they do regardless of the weather. Say you want photos of Grizzly Bears fishing for salmon in a river. Bears only feed on salmon in the rivers during a fairly short time span each year, sometimes as little as two weeks depending on the location and the salmon run that year. If it's rainy and there's horrible lighting, you're not just going to pass on shooting the bears that year. You just have to suck it up and realize that when it comes to wildlife photography, capturing the moment/action is more important than capturing only shots with perfect lighting. However if you can do both, all the power to you. Keep in mind all this good vs. bad lighting talk is only in reference to wildlife photography and is purely my thoughts on the subject. I've been guilty of passing up landscape shots due to poor weather on plenty of occasions because lets face it, a sunset on a heavily overcast/rainy day is very boring in comparison on one when the sun actually makes an appearance. Basically all I'm saying is don't let the weather stop you from getting the shots you want.

Alright so now for today's photos. I'll start with the waterfowl ones...

1/750 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 800

1/350 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 800

1/750 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 800

1/1500 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 800

1/500 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 800

1/500 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 800

1/1000 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 800

1/1500 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 800, +1.oev

As I mentioned above, I had some Sandhill Cranes land near me and was lucky enough to get some shots of them....here they are.

Saturday, January 9, 2010

This past week I've been at home resting up after yet another concussion so this morning I decided to get some fresh air, and my first waterfowl photos of the new year. It was raining in North Van so I headed to Ladner in hopes of better weather. It was raining there when I first arrived but it stopped shortly after and actually cleared up a bit and presented me with some amazing light...for about 45 seconds. Okay that might be a bit of an exaggeration about how little time I had decent light, but it honestly didn't last very long.

For some reason the ducks weren't flying much today. It could have been weather related but I'm not 100% sure. I mean with the overcast conditions it wasn't optimal for flight shots anyways so I wasn't too disappointed. So without them flying, I decided to just focus on behavioral shots. Preening, fluffing their feathers, diving, stretching...stuff like that. Here are some of the shots.

1/750 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 1000

1/3000 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 640, -0.5ev

1/750 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 640

1/1000 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 640

1/1000 @ f/5.6, 400mm, ISO 640

1/2000 @ f/5.6, 370mm, ISO 640

1/2000 @ f/5.6, 300mm, ISO 640

When the weather did finally clear for a few minutes I did happen to get a flight shot...here it is